Regarding the bumpy road, yesterday sucked donkey balls, but today is an improvement, heaps.  Sometimes I feel like the Fates smoke a huge joint and just chill before serving me another hand. Yesterday I got stuck dealing with the Seaman’s book. Namely – the doctor that I scheduled to have my medical exam at is okay for the agency that’s hiring me, but, yep, you guessed it, not the government. He simply isn’t costly and fussy enough. Instead of driving for an hour, paying one tenth of a monthly pay and getting my results the same day, then drive back, I would be forced to drive thrice for five hours one way, pay a quarter of a monthly pay PLUS a pregnancy test, plus CT of my chest, PLUS blood tests, PLUS psych evaluation, and then pay an additional 50 bucks for the fucking booklet. And of course no doctor that would perform this is registered to perform the Bahamas medical exam…

I was going to stab somebody or maybe strangle someone with the telephone cord. A woman in the nautical ministry spoke to me like I was asking to use her home toilet – saying things like ‘what do you want?’ or ‘that is not my problem’ or ‘can’t you use Internet – it’s all written there’… No, lady, sorry, I was asking you very specific things that are NOT written down on your web site. And you’re at the info desk.

Ultimately, the last person before I gave up on the world was a doctor’s nurse and she was amazingly polite and helpful and wrote down everything I need to get for the exam at their office and stuff I can get at home, to save some travel money. She was kind. As a human should be.

Today was better, though. The agency allowed me to skip the Seaman’s book and sacrifice St. Petersburg as a result, and so that problem will be solved some other day, when I find a way to not waste 400 € for five pages of paper and the gruesome fucks that work at the ministry on the taxpayer’s dime doing fucking nothing. We have ONE boat, for dick’s sakes. ONE fucking boat. And they’re leeching off sailors that need to go work abroad to have a life at sea.

Dad called to say we were supposed to go uphill to fix the picket fence and he already made lunch. This is his way of saying he misses me in advance and hopes to see me as oftentimes as possible before I take off. So, performing miracle, G and I demolished the decrepit wooden arrangement and set up a new frame, using nails, old screws and plastic tight-bands. As many of the old elements as we could use we nailed back onto the frame. The point of t is to look moderately appealing, but mostly to keep the dogs in. In both of these I think we succeeded. And it was raining the whole while.

G’s off to work now and I’m wrapping up the tasks I’m still tied to before my adventure starts. It seems like time is standing still and there’s a brand new chapter just around the corner. My plans are to cut off ties from the people I know completely (not closest friends and family, obviously, just random internet and town acquaintances) and make new friends, new acquaintances, new rivals and mentors. I’ve made a list of four things that I care to achieve – financially – until the end of this first tour, and two things regarding my person , personality or just the whirlwind that is me in the nutshell. As if to encourage me, the weather’s been as bleak as a dry, grey drab midwinter can be. You know – as all great adventures are supposed to start: in a remote, backbeat little village far away from an ocean, beaten by mountain winds and too small stars, where our heroine has had her holdall packed since 2004 and nobody but her true love will know what she’s really up to when suddenly she leaves and the village will be poorer for it :D